Is Microsoft rigging OOXML standards vote?
The Free Software Foundation Europe has accused Microsoft of “stuffing the ballot boxes” in a vote designed to establish Office Open XML as a recognised industry standard. Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) president Georg Greve said on Wednesday that unprecedented numbers of Microsoft partner companies from several countries have joined standards organisations and have voted to approve the Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. ISO certification would result in governments accepting OOXML as a recognised document format, encouraging its use to the exclusion of others. The FSFE argues this could lock governments into perpetual licensing relationships with Microsoft, as documents need to be kept in perpetuity. Votes on ISO certification by national bodies in Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the US have all been influenced by Microsoft, according to Greve. “Membership of the Swiss body s
